


Concealment and Betrayal

by khilari



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Community: norsekink, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, medical gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-08
Updated: 2012-12-08
Packaged: 2017-11-20 14:42:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/586492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khilari/pseuds/khilari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki refuses to believe he really saw his hand turn blue and never confronts Odin in the vault. But the lies Loki tells himself take their toll on his body and when he tries to ignore the illness this causes he finds himself in serious trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Concealment and Betrayal

Loki stared at his hand, the glow of his bedroom showing pale, unmarked flesh. What else had he expected? Men saw strange things on the battlefield, when their senses were heightened by danger, and he’d had a frost giant about to stab him. The light on Jotunheim was bluish in itself. He wasn’t even really sure what he’d seen. He let out a breath, hissing between his teeth. Nothing had happened.

He was still shaking as he changed for bed, but it didn’t mean anything. It had been a long day, being dragged off to Jotunheim. Thor’s fault, of course, inconsiderate as always, he _deserved_ to be banished (alone and powerless on an alien world) even if Loki hadn’t intended that. A lot had happened. He’d be fine after a night’s sleep.

That night he slept restlessly, constantly waking with the feeling someone was standing by his bed, watching him, sometimes threatening and sometimes disapproving. More than once he woke with a knife already in his hand.

In the morning his left wrist was sore, when he looked at it the skin was cracked and red. It made sense, he’d been grabbed by a frost giant the day before (hadn’t he?) so of course he’d be hurt. It didn’t look much like frostbite, though. Since it also didn’t look serious he shrugged it off and went out to find out what was going on.

Sif, Fandral, Volstagg and Hogun were standing in the courtyard where the feast had been set up the day before, talking to one another. They looked angry and when they saw him approach they stiffened and went quiet, looking at him as if he might be an enemy. Loki straightened in response.

‘What news today?’ he asked.

‘The guard who was stabbed yesterday died,’ said Sif bluntly.

Loki didn’t move. Were they angry with him about that? But they didn’t know what he’d done (he hadn’t done anything, only tried to stop the coronation, it had only been a few frost giants, no one should have been stabbed. It wasn’t his fault the guards were careless).

‘If it wasn’t for Thor he’d not have been avenged at all,’ Fandral added indignantly. ‘And for that he was banished. Are you still in favour of that?’

Loki rubbed unconsciously at his chest, and coughed before managing to speak. ‘Attacking Jotunheim was still a foolhardy enterprise. Father will have paid the guard’s family compensation, honour doesn’t require vengeance as well.’ They looked at him with varying expressions of low-level hostility. ‘I worry about Thor too, but he will be fine. Father would not have done this otherwise.’

‘For someone worried about him you seem remarkably calm about having him gone,’ said Sif.

‘I am not going to stand here defending my trust in my king’s decisions,’ Loki answered curtly. ‘If there’s no other news I shall leave you.’

He walked off without waiting for an answer. Behind him he heard Volstagg say something he didn’t catch and Sif respond with, ‘He’s in a better position to talk to Odin than the rest of us, and he doesn’t even care enough to do that.’

*

The day seemed to last forever. Odin was curt and distracted, Frigga was anxious, and Loki heard them having an argument when he was just out of earshot, able to make out the hurt and anger in Frigga’s voice, the implacability of Odin’s, but not the words. Probably about Thor.

His lessons were interminable, duties even more so, and halfway through the day he found that telling the guard’s family and giving the compensation would normally be Thor’s duty and was now his. The man’s widow took it bravely, no tears in her eyes in front of her prince. Loki made it through the formal praises of a man he’d hardly known, feeling as if something was being twisted inside his chest. Afterwards he made it into an alley before doubling over coughing. He wiped his mouth shakily and found a small bloodstain on his handkerchief when he pulled it away.

Returning to the palace he went to the throne room to ask about further duties, and whether he needed to be doing any more of Thor’s, and found Frigga on the throne instead of Odin.

‘Mother? What happened?’ he asked.

She looked at him, brow furrowed slightly. ‘Your father entered the Odinsleep.’

‘And you are regent.’ She normally was. But if Thor had been here then he would have been, this time, and Loki was also of age.

‘It was thought best. We overestimated how ready Thor was, and we expected his first time on the throne to be a few days where not much was happening. Things have been left volatile now.’

Loki nodded, the motion seeming to jar something inside his brain and leaving him dizzy. ‘I understand. I came to ask if any of Thor’s other duties fall to me.’

Her expression was sympathetic, as she realised which duty he’d just carried out. ‘No. I think you have done enough for today.’

Loki bowed to her and left.

He made meadowsweet tea, since it was good for both colds and headaches. Catching a cold after going to Jotunheim was hardly surprising (even though he’d coughed up blood, not phlegm, and he hadn’t _felt_ cold) and not worth bothering the healers with. He’d just have a quiet evening in his rooms to recover and he’d be fine the next day.

The ivory rune charm he was carving should have been soothing, a simple one to ward off minor illnesses, something he often carved for practise and normally gave to Asgard’s children as he ones most likely to need them. But that evening his knife slipped and his vision blurred, until he was continuing out of pure stubborness and the charm would probably leave anyone fool enough to wear it bedridden with its misshapen runes.

Finally his knife slipped badly enough to cut the pad of his thumb and by the time he’d washed and bandaged it he was too fed up to go back to carving and decided on an early night. The charm he burnt.

*

The next morning he woke feeling sick and shaky, an ache in his bones as if he’d overworked himself physically. When he peeled his covers back he found them stained with blood and pus, his arm sloughing its skin. He must have picked up an infection — he should have bandaged it yesterday, instead of leaving it. After cleaning up he sent for an infusion of pine needles to wash it down with and comfrey for a poultice to put on it before bandaging it up. His stomach felt too unsettled for breakfast, but he drank some willowbark tea for the infection and his returning headache.

He spent the morning overseeing the delivery of game to the kitchen for a feast that night — one in honour of Odin, it was tradition to praise him during the Odinsleep while hoping for his safe recovery. But to Loki the celebrations sometimes felt too much like funeral rites with all the focus on honouring an absent guest. By noon it felt as if his legs were stuffed with lead and his head with wool. When he changed his bandage in his rooms more of his skin peeled off with it, leaving his arm a sickly, mottled yellow and red. He definitely should have treated the infection sooner, he decided. But the comfrey and pine needle infusions would probably clear it up in a few days.

Lunch felt heavy in his stomach, but he was less lightheaded afterwards.

He was practising with his knives — badly, very few had even hit the target — when a messenger summoned him to see Frigga. By then he was grateful for the excuse to stop. She was seated on the throne, Gungnir resting against it at an angle. For a moment the shape it made, tilted against the straight lines of the throne, seemed to hold significance and then Loki blinked and it resolved into a mere coincidence of angles. He bowed.

‘You summoned me, Mother?’

She stood up and walked over to take his arm, stopping when he flinched at her touch. ‘What ails you?’

‘I was a little wounded, on Jotunheim. There is a slight infection, nothing more.’

‘You should see Eir about it,’ she said. ‘Your health is important.’

Loki bowed his head in acknowledgement, even though he had no intention of seeking Eir. He was busy, with many of Thor’s duties to attend to as well as his own, and Eir was always busy. There was no need to take up her time with something that was only a problem because he’d been foolish to begin with.

‘Loki,’ she began, taking his hand instead of his arm. ‘Some of your friends came to see me, earlier today.’

‘To ask you to bring Thor back,’ he said tonelessly. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted them to have convinced her — even if he hadn’t intended for Thor to be banished, he still had more chance of proving himself with him gone. Once Odin was awake again.

‘No.’ Her hand tightened on his. ‘To tell me they were afraid you had let the frost giants into his coronation.’

Loki held his breath, suppressing the sharp pain in his chest that wanted to become a coughing fit until he could talk without triggering it. ‘They always suspect the worst of me.’

She pulled him around to face her, looking up at him earnestly. There were lines of worry carved into her face — for Thor, most likely, or for Odin even though the Odinsleep was routine. ‘If you did this, then tell me. Tell me why you would be angry enough with your brother to do such a thing.’

‘Are you telling me you believe it too?’ It hurt that she would think such a thing of him so easily, and he let the hurt show on his face. ‘I didn’t think I had done anything to make you judge me so.’

Her eyes searched his face and she let out a breath, truly wanting to believe him. ‘I’m sorry, Loki. But I wouldn’t have believed Thor willing to throw so much away for hurt pride. Lately it seems I hardly know my children.’

‘I am still the same as I ever was,’ he said, squeezing her hand in reassurance.

The smile she gave him in return was shadowed. ‘Go and relax this afternoon,’ she said. ‘I will find someone else to take your duties. Recover from your wound.’

Loki bowed, playfully, trying not to pant as the pain in his chest flared. ‘As you wish, my Queen.’

*

Later Loki went to see Heimdall. Despite everything he was worried about Thor, and it was pointless to wonder when there was an easy way to find out. The Bifrost did nothing for his residual lightheadedness, making him so dizzy he had to sit down halfway along it, feeling very small in the middle of an expanse of shimmering light with distant stars shining down on him.

After recovering enough to walk the rest of the way he found Heimdall standing at the head of the Bifrost, impassive as ever as he gazed out at the stars.

‘What of Thor, Gatekeeper?’ Loki asked.

Heimdall did not turn to look at him. ‘Thor grieves for his lost home.’

‘But he is not hurt?’

There was a long moment, during which Heimdall seemed to be deliberating. ‘No. A little bruised, but he will heal.’

Loki put a hand against the observatory wall to steady himself. ‘What happened to him?’

‘He was twice hit by a vehicle of Midgard, shocked by a weapon of lightning designed to stun and fought many warriors to reach Mjolnir before finding he could not lift it. But he has found friends, and he recovers.’

Loki dropped his head, dizziness assailing him again. The irony of someone using a weapon of lightning on Thor didn’t escape him, but wasn’t enough to overcome the anxiety. Thor was _mortal_. Any of those things could have killed him. Thor had found friends, though. Even on another world, where he knew nothing of the customs, had no title, no strength, no reputation, Thor was _liked_.

‘As I said, he took no serious harm.’

Loki looked up. Was that concern in Heimdall’s eyes? It looked out of place there. ‘You are watching him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Continue to do so.’ Loki pulled himself upright and set off back across the Bifrost. This time he didn’t allow himself to stop, but kept putting one foot in front of the other no matter how dizzy he felt.

At the feast that night praise for Thor slipped in among the praise for Odin. Stories of his triumphs being told now and then, sometimes by Fandral who loved to tell the stories at these gatherings and who did so this time with a defiant look at Loki. A new poem about the time Thor killed a giant wolf, by a young poet. Since Thor was also absent it didn’t help with the funereal atmosphere.

Loki ate sparingly, stomach feeling unsettled, and realised too late that the many toasts of the night were taking their toll on his sobriety with nothing to soak them up. Leaving was impossible, the royals were the heart of these events, even though he was sure his responses to people were making less and less sense.

‘You’re drunk,’ Sif said. He wondered when she’d arrived beside him.

‘Too many toasts to my absent brother,’ he answered. ‘Which were not my idea.’

‘No. You would sooner not think of him at all,’ Sif answered.

‘I asked Heimdall how he was.’

Sif looked interested, hopeful. ‘And what did he say?’

‘Thor has found friends. He hasn’t yet managed to lift Mjolnir, though. He was hurt, but not badly, and he misses Asgard.’ It would have been wiser not to add the last sentence, but his thoughts lagged behind the words.

‘It’s your fault he’s not here,’ Sif said, voice low but certain. ‘If you admitted your part in it he might be forgiven.’

‘I had no part in it. And even if I had, what difference do you think it would make? He still chose to go to Jotunheim, that was no doing of mine.’

‘So you reap the benefits.’

‘What benefits?’ Loki asked, bitterly. ‘More duties and more suspicion? To do the work of two princes and get no thanks for it?’

‘Don’t pretend you’re being overworked,’ Sif said, disgusted. ‘You did a few of Thor’s duties on top of your own and then took the afternoon off. At least he does them without complaint.’

‘But everyone _loves_ him for it.’ Loki’s voice was not as quiet as it could have been, rising with bitterness and disgust, and a few of the people near them were starting to glance over uneasily. Loki swallowed. He was making a scene.

‘And we would love you better if you didn’t hate him for what is none of his doing,’ Sif answered, dropping her voice still further to compensate. She walked away, hair whipping out as she turned and gaining red highlights in the torchlight.

The conversations near Loki resumed, but no one tried to include him in them.

*

The next few days passed miserably. Neither his arm nor his cough improved and he seemed to be bruising easily as well, finding bruises on his shins when he’d stumbled slightly against a chair or on his shoulder where someone had knocked against him in a corridor. It was as well none of his friends were likely to invite him to spar, still sullen and suspicious whenever he was around.

On the third day he went to Odin’s room — the guards letting him by without question — and sat next to Odin’s bed, looking down at his father, who looked old and grey against the sheets.

‘Loki?’ Frigga’s voice from the doorway made him look up. ‘The guards said you’d been in here for a while.’

It felt as if he’d barely sat down. ‘The Odinsleep doesn’t usually last this long.’

‘No.’ She came over and laid a hand on his shoulder.

Loki shivered. ‘Do you know when he’ll wake up?’ He couldn’t bring himself to ask if Odin would wake up.

‘I do not know. He was putting it off for a long time. I fear —’ She broke off with a sigh. ‘I have been sitting with him as well, when I can spare the time, but it does no good to fret over him. I have to trust he knew his own limits.’

The idea of Asgard without Odin was impossible, like imagining the sun would one day not come up and everything would continue anyway. It couldn’t happen. ‘He will be fine,’ he said, hearing the conviction in his own voice as he looked up at Frigga.

It made her smile, her expression lightening, and she reached down to hug him impulsively. He bit his tongue against the pain in his arm.

‘I stayed here longer than I intended,’ he said. ‘I should be…’ He couldn’t remember what he should be doing. The last few days had been a list of places he should be, interspersed with resting in his room, and he’d finally lost track.

Frigga’s brow was furrowing again. ‘Are you feeling well?’

‘Distracted,’ he said, indicating Odin.

‘You’ve been wonderful,’ Frigga told him, stroking his hair. ‘With everything — at least you are safe.’

Loki stood up, smiling faintly at the praise. ‘And now I must go and be wonderful some more.’

Outside the palace he doubled over, coughing so hard it felt as if his lungs might be coming up in chunks. Afterwards there was a small pool of blood on the ground, and he kicked dirt over it before leaving.

*

Loki didn’t remember his dreams. Just that the pain had followed him into them, along with a sense of someone being angry with him, standing over him and watching him suffer. He woke feeling no more rested than when he’d fallen asleep, but relieved to no longer be dreaming. His covers were smeared with blood and pus, his bandages soaked through, and he groaned at the thought of peeling them off to change them. It wouldn’t get any better if he left it, though.

He pulled himself into a sitting position and his head immediately started swimming, the room around him turning into a swirl of gold and white, so that he wound up with his head resting on his knees while he waited for the dizziness to pass. It didn’t, really, but enough that he thought he could walk to the washroom.

As soon as he stood his legs folded under him, leaving him collapsed beside his bed, already feeling the bruises on his knees. Pain jolted him into taking a sharp breath and that started a coughing fit that left blood on the floor. He grabbed a bedpost to pull himself up by, but his arms had no more strength than his legs. There was a sick, shivery panic, the realisation that he couldn’t move sweeping over him like a tide, and he rested his head against the mattress, taking quick gasping breaths that were nearly sobs.

He needed to call somebody.

There was a bell to summon servants beside his bed. On a table a few feet away from him. Yet he wasn’t even sure he could reach it. Someone would notice if he failed to show up for breakfast, or at least if he failed to be there after breakfast when he had things he was meant to be doing. In a few hours someone would come. It felt like his chest was being torn open. He needed help _now_.

Holding his breath to avoid a coughing fit he crawled closer to the table, almost dragging himself. Putting his weight on his left arm felt like dipping it in boiling oil. At the base of the table he collapsed, head resting against the cool flagstones of the floor, breath whistling in and out of his lungs. There was a sense that time had passed, he wasn’t sure whether he’d been unconscious or fallen back into sleep, but his mind felt a bit clearer and he had the strength to pull himself up into a sitting position again, resting against the side of his bed. He felt about on the top of the table with his right hand, lifting his arm took more effort than he would have thought possible, until his fingertips knocked against the bell. It fell over, and he hauled himself up onto his heels to get enough reach to grab it before it rolled away from him. That started him coughing and he curled over onto the floor, hacking up blood and clutching at the bell like a lifeline. It was only once the coughing and the following panicked dizziness started to pass that he remembered to ring it.

The manservant who came to the summons took one look at Loki and his eyes went wide with horror. Loki looked down at the flagstones; he was lying in a pool of blood, more blood smudged across the floor where he’d crawled through it. The man turned and left, shouting for help, for the healers to be summoned, and Loki closed his eyes. He should be conscious when the healers arrived to explain, and it was a terrible idea to let himself pass out with an untreated injury, but he was so tired. Just for a moment he needed to rest.

*

Loki woke up feeling strange and dazed. It took him a while to realise the strangeness was because much of the pain was gone. His arm felt sore and itchy and his chest heavy but that was all. This was part of the healing halls, a private room, he thought sluggishly. The bed was glowing faintly with healing and pain relief spells and he could sense rune charms under the mattress too. Except, although he could feel them, he couldn’t feel his body aligning with them as they gently pulled it back towards health. Were they not working or was his ability to sense magic confused?

He heard the door open and close and turned his head to see who had walked in. Eir was standing there with a glass of something clear and faintly sparkling.

‘Do you think you can drink this?’ she asked.

Loki nodded, suddenly thirsty, and she helped him sit up. When he tried to take the glass his hand was trembling and Eir shook her head and raised it to his lips herself. It tasted like water but left his mouth cold, as if he’d been chewing peppermint.

‘Would you like to lie back down now?’ Eir asked, putting the empty glass down and pulling over a chair to sit by his bed.

‘No,’ Loki croaked, and wet his lips with his tongue. ‘No, thank you.’ He’d rather talk to her sitting up.

‘Your mother told us you’d been wounded on Jotunheim and believed you’d picked up an infection,’ said Eir, voice gentle.

Loki frowned at her. ‘Yes. One of them touched me. Their touch injures. And it is clearly infected. I thought it was minor, at first.’ He looked at his heavily bandaged arm.

‘Can you tell me exactly what their touch did?’

He didn’t remember. It had been frostbite, hadn’t it? ‘I’m not sure. There was a lot going on, and afterwards…it seemed I hadn’t even been injured, at first. Does it matter? Surely it’s the infection that’s causing problems now.’

Eir looked at him sympathetically. ‘It’s not infected. Not with anything we can find.’

‘Then something on Jotunheim, some local infection.’ Loki looked at her. ‘Or a curse?’ It could have been a curse. He’d seen strange things, hadn’t he? At the time.

‘We did check,’ Eir said. ‘It’s no curse we can find, either. But we’re still looking.’

Loki swallowed, the shivery panic he’d felt in his bedroom when he realised he couldn’t move returning. What if they couldn’t heal him?

‘Can you tell me when the cough started?’ Eir asked.

‘After Jotunheim.’ Loki’s voice was shaking. ‘I thought it was a cold, at first.’

‘When exactly?’

‘The next day. I was talking to Sif, and the others.’ His head was spinning, Eir took his right hand and he clutched at hers.

‘I’m sorry,’ Eir said. ‘I know this is a lot right now, but we do need to know as much as possible.’

‘I know. I meant to stay awake, so I could tell you earlier.’

‘You really weren’t in any state to answer questions then.’ Eir squeezed his hand, very gently. ‘You’re also bruising easily. Did that start after Jotunheim?’

‘After the banquet.’

‘That’s all for now. Get some rest.’

Eir stood up and leant over him, ready to help him lie down again. Loki let her, too weak to do much to help.

*

Loki drifted into sleep and was woken violently, by a coughing fit that left his pillow stained with blood. The healers brought him a clean one and fed him soup and later attended, embarrassingly, to body functions he was too weak to deal with himself. The pattern repeated, the exhausted drop into uneasy sleep followed by the painful awakening a few hours later. The pain in his chest was getting worse again, even when Eir strengthened the pain relief spells. When his bandages were changed he had to grit his teeth while they were peeled away, and when he looked at his arm it was yellow-red and slimy.

Once he woke to find Frigga in the room and turned away from her as he coughed, wanting to spare her the sight of it. She rested her hand between his shoulderblades, gently rubbing his back as he gasped for breath. Afterwards, when a clean pillow had been brought and he had sunk back into it, she stroked his hair back as if he was still a child.

‘Oh, Loki,’ she said, softly.

He closed his eyes. ‘They don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ he said, voice small and lost.

‘They are still seeking an answer,’ she said. ‘Maybe some magic we don’t know about.’

‘If they don’t find it, am I going to die?’

Her hand paused on his forehead, he could feel the cool, dry skin against his own overheated brow. There was a moment of silence long enough to encompass a deeper terror than Loki had ever imagined. ‘No,’ she said.

He didn’t believe her. For the first time he thought he understood why dying gloriously on the battlefield might be a good thing. Not because death was to be sought but because the alternative was dying like this, feeble and scared while your own body turned on you.

‘Loki. I will not let you die.’

Opening his eyes he looked up at her, seeing the fear and worry in her expression and also the determination. ‘How?’ he asked, desperate for any kind of hope.

‘I have been speaking with Eir,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. Yet. But it is not hopeless.’

He closed his eyes again, tears squeezing out from under the lids. Frigga stayed with him until he once more fell uneasily into sleep.

Another time he was told Sif was waiting outside and asked if he would see her. He agreed and then wondered why, whether he was just desperate for a distraction (or maybe a sign that people cared). She looked uneasy in a healing room, and too vibrant, too hard edged after gentle, white clad healers, and couldn’t hide her horror at the sight of him.

‘Loki,’ she began. ‘We all wanted to come, but they said it should only be one of us, and I was the one who needed to say this most. We’re sorry. If we’d known you were ill we wouldn’t have argued.’

Loki turned away abruptly as the pain in his chest started again. It didn’t even seem to be the precurser to a cough, this time, just a violent tearing inside him. ‘What difference would it have made?’ he said breathlessly. ‘If you suspect me, illness would make me no more innocent.’

‘We would have at least waited until you were better to bring it up.’ Sif sat down in the chair by his bed, stiff and at least as embarrassed by his weakness as he was. ‘We would have helped you with Thor’s duties, if we’d known you found them heavy because you were this sick, and left our suspicions to be worked out later.’ She shook her head. ‘If we’d known about _this_ we would have carried you to the healing halls ourselves. Why would you ignore it?’

‘It didn’t seem serious,’ he said weakly. ‘I thought it was just an infected injury and a cold, from Jotunheim.’ He hadn’t known he was dying. Sif knew it now as well as he did, he thought. That was what the apology was for, so the last thing she ever said to him wouldn’t have been a barb.

‘I really am sorry. If we hadn’t been angry with you we would have been spending more time together, we would have noticed.’

So not having them angry with him might have saved his life. He turned away from her, rolling onto his side with an effort that made everything start dancing in his vision. ‘Don’t expect forgiveness from me.’ Not for letting him die.

Sif touched his shoulder gingerly. ‘You don’t have to forgive me. But we all want you to know we care about you.’

When he didn’t answer she left, steps harsh and oddly military against the floor.

*

Frigga visited frequently over the next few days but said little, until one day after she’d helped him sit up and held the cup while he drank the sparkling potion they often gave him, she put it down and said, ‘We need to talk.’

Loki leant back against the pillows, tired as he always was now. ‘About what?’

‘I spoke with Eir earlier. I have been speaking with her a lot.’ She sighed. ‘We think we know what is happening to you.’

‘You do?’ Loki leant forward, feeling the ache in his back as he did. ‘Can it be cured?’

‘Maybe.’ She took his hands in hers. ‘The cause is not in your body but your mind.’

‘How can it be? I am bleeding, not mad.’

Frigga smiled at him, terribly sadly. ‘For anyone stress of the mind can show in the body, but much more for you. I should have realised sooner, but none of us knew what it could mean.’

‘Why more for me? You are talking in riddles.’ His voice was rising with frustration.

‘You were born a natural shapeshifter. For you, the body is a reflection of what the mind believes it should be.’

‘Are you saying I want myself _dead_? That I could fight this if I tried? I tried, but it’s inside me and I do not not know _how_.’ His voice broke on the last word and he started coughing, curling over, while Frigga let go of his hands moved to sit on the bed so she could hold his shoulders.

‘My child, no, I am not blaming you. But I must know what in your mind is hurting you so much if we are to draw this poison.’

Loki drooped forward, letting his head come to rest on her shoulder. ‘…I do not know.’

‘Perhaps I should start,’ she said. ‘Even with the best of intentions, keeping secrets may not have been the best thing for you.’ Loki stiffened. Did she already know the secrets he was keeping, then? She wrapped her arms around him, lightly, as if he might crack open like an egg if she applied any pressure, and began, ‘Natural shapeshifters are not found in Asgard. It is why we know so little about them.’

Loki shifted back enough to see her face, finding a solemn, abstracted look there. ‘Then what of me?’ he asked.

‘At the end of the war on Jotunheim your father found a baby, abandoned in a temple. Tiny, for a Jotun, even a newborn. When he lifted the babe it changed in his hands.’ She closed her eyes for a moment in what appeared to be pain. ‘A natural response to perhaps the first gentle touch of its life, to mimic the one who held it.’

‘I’m a Jotun?’ Loki asked in bewilderment. No, he could not be one of Asgard’s ancestral enemies. It meant nothing.

‘You were a Jotun. But your mimicry was perfect. No inspection showed anything but a healthy Asgardian child.’

Loki struggled to sit up, to get away from her, and she let him go. He wound up sprawled half back against his pillows panting with effort and anger. ‘Why? Why take me, why lie to me? What use could I possibly be that you would risk letting me think I was a prince — risk the possibility of a _frost giant_ on the throne of Asgard, no matter how much you did to avoid it. What did you want?’

‘You.’ The word was simple and solemn, not followed up with any further justifications.

He pressed back against the pillows, shivering. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Odin loved you from the moment he picked you up. How could he not love a child that needed him so much? I did too. We wanted to forget you had not been born to us.’

‘Wanted to forget,’ Loki repeated bitterly. ‘In Jotunheim one touched me and I wasn’t injured. I thought I was seeing things.’

‘What did you see?’

‘I saw my arm turn blue.’ He twisted away, burying his face against the pillows, feeling as if something inside him was broken. ‘No. I didn’t see it. None of this can be true.’

‘Loki.’ Frigga wrapped her arms around him again, pulling him towards her and rocking him as if he was still the babe she’d spoken of. ‘I’m sorry. We should never have kept this from you. But you must accept it.’

‘Because it will kill me if I do not?’ There was no answer. It was true, then. The discovery of his own monstrous nature and his rejection of it was at the heart of this. ‘But how can I accept that I am a monster?’

‘You are not a monster,’ said Frigga firmly. ‘You are still my beautiful boy, and that you were born one race and not another makes no difference. The sins of a whole race are not yours to carry. You have done nothing wrong.’

_Nothing_. But she didn’t know about his own secrets. He drew breath — to argue, perhaps, or demand more details — and started coughing. Once again he waited for it to pass, but it kept on and on. He couldn’t breathe, there was no space between the coughs to draw a breath, he was light headed from lack of air. He was going to die here, still reeling from the revelation of his identity, right now, he was sure of it. There were hands against his chest, healers had arrived, and bursts of warmth as they cast spells. He drew a rough, painful breath that didn’t immediately become a cough.

Eir replaced the pillow and cover and helped him lie down. Frigga’s dress was bloodstained, a splash of red against gold.

‘He’s exhausted,’ he heard Eir say. ‘You should come back later.’

‘No!’ He threw himself sideways, managing to grasp at Frigga’s skirt, the certainty with which he had anticipated his own death a few minutes ago driving him. He didn’t have time for later. ‘You said you could stop this. Please.’

Frigga leant over him, resting her fingertips against his forehead. ‘Tell me what’s on your mind.’

He shivered, gazing up at her helplessly. ‘Just you.’ Eir and the other healers started to file out, without Frigga even having to say anything. Once they were gone he remained mute, despite his intentions. Even to save his own life he wasn’t sure he could do this.

‘Tell me,’ she repeated, coaxingly.

‘The coronation. I let the frost giants in. I never meant for anyone to die.’ Maybe he did believe he deserved death. For being a monster and for being a murderer.

Frigga turned away, trying to hide the pain on her face. ‘You’ve punished yourself for it more than enough,’ she said evenly.

Loki closed his eyes. ‘Is there such a thing, once someone’s dead?’

He felt her sit on the edge of the bed, the mattress sinking slightly under her, and her hand spread across his chest. ‘Nothing would be solved by losing you as well.’

‘Thor could have died too. It’s my fault he was exiled.’

‘ _That_ was Thor’s own doing, even if you precipitated it. Of all things, there’s no need to blame yourself for his rashness. Even if I would very much like to know why you wished to ruin his coronation.’

‘He was not ready to be king, it was just indulgence. Asgard needed —’ Frigga’s finger on his lips stopped him and he opened his eyes, blinking up at her.

‘Loki. If those are your true reasons then I will listen. But you cannot lie. Least of all to yourself.’

Loki’s breath trembled. His chest hurt, but this time he didn’t start coughing. ‘He always has everything. If I can’t have it I can at least take it from him.’ Childish, spiteful, pitiful. But true.

‘Have we really neglected you so much?’ Frigga asked sadly. ‘What did he have that you wanted?’

‘Love. Respect.’

‘Your father and I love you very much.’

‘But all Asgard loves Thor.’

‘No one is loved by a whole country.’ Frigga was smiling slightly, a smile that made its way into her voice. ‘Where Thor loves he loves loudly, and those who love him love the same way. With great sincerity but no restraint. There are others in Asgard who think he is too young and too rash. There are more who think little of him one way or another, and pay love to him like a tribute to the throne. Thor is too naive yet to really see the difference between those who love him as a person and those who love him as a symbol.’ She stroked Loki’s hair back. ‘You do not court love the way he does.’

‘I would not know how.’

‘I think if you were to turn your mind to charming people you would be good enough to be politically terrifying,’ Frigga said. ‘But if you imagine it would win you friends rather than allies — or that Thor is surrounded by friends outside your group — then you would be disappointed.’

Loki considered that, mind still feeling sluggish and making turning over the new ideas slow. ‘That was everything,’ he said. ‘What happens now?’

‘Now I forgive you for your follies and hope you can forgive mine,’ Frigga answered, still stroking his hair. ‘And that you can forgive yourself, or at least not take these things out on your body.’

‘I was never doing it intentionally,’ Loki answered, gazing up at her pleadingly. ‘I do not know if I can stop.’

‘Go to sleep. Eir was right that you are exhausted. And we will find out if your mind is more at peace.’

‘Will you stay here?’

‘I promise.’

*

Loki woke, feeling groggy but no longer tired. His chest ached, but there was no blood on the pillow and his lungs drew in air without it catching. Frigga was sitting by his bedside, she had changed out of her bloodstained dress into a green one, but she looked weary.

‘How long was I asleep?’ he asked, voice muzzy.

She smiled at him. ‘Fourteen hours.’

‘Were you here the whole time?’

‘Of course. I promised.’ Her smile grew mischievous for a moment. ‘I missed a feast in your honour because of it.’

‘Really?’ But Asgard loved to have feasts the guest of honour couldn’t attend, as with the Odinsleep.

‘Really.’ She leant forward, looking him in the eyes. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Better rested.’ He touched his bandaged arm experimentally and hissed in pain.

Frigga took his hand. ‘Healing is still going to take time. As is recovering your strength.’

Loki squeezed her hand, feeling how weak the motion was. The conversation from yesterday played in his mind. It seemed so surreal, it would be easy to dismiss parts of it as a fever dream mixed in by his confused mind. Surely he couldn’t really be a Jotun? But, of all things, he could not afford to think like that. ‘I’m really a frost giant?’ The question was probably foolish, but he needed the confirmation, just to stop himself trying to pretend it wasn’t true.

‘You were really born one,’ Frigga answered. ‘For a shapeshifter I think anything you are in the present is a choice.’

‘Except Asgard doesn’t produce shapeshifters.’

‘Perhaps I shouldn’t put it like that. Would it be better to say that you _are_ a Jotun, and I have never loved you any less for it?’

Loki smiled faintly. ‘It’s going to take some getting used to, however you put it.’

‘You’ll have time to get used to the idea.’

Time. He had never thought to be so grateful for it, for minutes stretching to hours in front of him instead of abruptly truncated. Never thought to be so grateful for every breath he took that allowed him to keep living. To be weak and ill, but recovering, to feel that strength and health lay ahead. Even with things left still to do, people he needed to talk to and things he needed to resolve, there would be time for that. Later. When he was better. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, feeling tears of relief standing in his eyes. ‘I will have time.’


End file.
